Senior Concept Mapping Study

The Community Assessment of Senior Need for Herkimer and Oneida Counties is an initiative embarked upon by The Community Foundation of Herkimer & Oneida Counties (The Foundation) with support from the Health Foundation of Western and Central New York (HFWCNY), to engage community stakeholders from Herkimer and Oneida counties in a process of information-gathering and consensus building using a process called Concept Mapping.

Concept Mapping takes the ideas of individuals and combines them to form unique visual representations called Concept Maps. Using a brainstorming process with a carefully worded “focus prompt,” ideas generated by Oneida and Herkimer county residents were recorded. The focus prompt used for this project was: “One specific thing that would make it more likely for a person to independently remain in this community as they grow older is . . ..”

Over 200 persons met at six sites in the two counties to generate 298 responses to the prompt. These responses were consolidated into 100 idea statements for the purposes of sorting and rating. Brainstorming participants, along with other stakeholders from the two counties, were invited and encouraged to sort and rate the brainstormed ideas and to provide some basic demographic information on a specially prepared website. Respondents sorted idea statements as to their similarity and rated them according to how relatively important and how successfully addressed each one was thought to be.

The key to benefiting from this report is examining, understanding and thinking about the concept maps and graphs contained herein. The reader is advised to use the limited written interpretation included with these illustrations as a stimulus for his or her own insight and planning. These data, in this form, can help stimulate conversations, build consensus and lead to creative program development in assisting individuals to remain independently in their own communities as they grow older.